


we don't look innocent enough

by sofarsoperfect



Category: Sugar Pine 7 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crime & Crews, Alternate Universe - GTA Setting, Gen, Kidnapping, Non-Graphic Violence, character study of a sort, sugar pine crew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 17:38:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12731214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sofarsoperfect/pseuds/sofarsoperfect
Summary: Sniffling once more, Autumn took a deep breath.She refused to cry. If she was going to die here, she was willing to accept that.





	we don't look innocent enough

To say that Autumn had been captured before would be, technically, a lie. She had been imprisoned before, by her own crew, and subjected to humiliating as well as painful torture for bullshit reasons. But she had never been captured or kidnapped by an outside source to get to the people in charge. She often considered the reasoning there to be because she wasn’t entirely that important as a crew member. She was replaceable the same way you get a new computer system when the old one becomes obsolete. She had skills that a lot of other people had, however she had made the decision, unlike most, to specialize in hacking and computers. Most crews these days, like colleges, wanted well-rounded members of society in their books and Autumn could admit that was not her. 

However, having joined the Sugar Pine Crew she had felt she was far more important, almost too important for her tastes. She liked the back rooms of places, just her and the keys and the computer and reading lines of code for hours until she finished what she started. It was quiet, it was methodical and Sugar Pine had managed to push all of her limits. 

The second day she was there she had to save the boss’ life because he was too naive to see the set-up. She was legally deaf and could read his lips, left the office after him with her case in hands. Autumn couldn’t even get to the roof before she saw the guy pull a gun on Steven in the parking lot, her hands auto-piloting their way through putting together her sniper and putting her eye to the lense. 

James was halfway down the stairs behind her, having ignored her entirely and Steven had squeezed his eyes shut, having to seemingly accepted his fate. Autumn pulled the trigger, knocking the guy to the ground. James stopped on the third to last stair, turning to look at the front door of the office where she had set up shop in a haste. Steven looked up in awe and surprise, obviously astounded that he was still alive. 

“You’re hired!” Steven shouted up at her. Autumn lifted her head from her sniper, not quite catching what he had said but blinked at him instead. Good enough for him. 

Autumn still, to this day, chooses to stay out of their personal lives. It wasn’t important to her what they got up to in their day to day lives, especially since Cib and his girlfriend were constantly getting into run-ins with the police and James was always gone. Sometimes it was just her, hacking, in the office with Steven complaining into the phone about crew business. 

It really didn’t surprise her at all that they hadn’t even attempted a heist, a general Rooster Teeth collective rite of passage. 

It turned out, though, that it was merely a matter of time and, apparently, the heist was far more important than they could have thought possible. The prize at the end of the heist was their hacker, Autumn.

Autumn woke up one morning in a cold, dark room. She was lying on a mattress in the corner of the small room, light filtering in from four slots at the top of the east and west walls of the room. She turned over, a heavy feeling of grogginess clouding her thoughts and memories, finding herself unable to lift her right hand from the ground. 

Lifting her opposite hand, she rubbed at her eyes and shook her head to try and clear her thoughts. Autumn yawned widely and then reached over to lift her right hand with her left. She was slowly coming out of her fog, and with the strength of both arms she could lift her right hand. It was then that she realized that someone had chained it to the floor. 

It wasn’t a very heavy chain and neither was the cuff but whatever they had given her, and she was certain she had been given something at this point, was keeping her too tired and weighed down to even handle it. Her eyes followed the length of the chain to where it was connected to the floor. Picking herself up slowly, she realized that there was a toilet in the corner of the room, the mattress she had just been lying on, two flimsy blankets on top of it and a very flat pillow. There wasn’t much to do or go in the room, there was hardly enough light to see in the dark room, she could only imagine the pitch blackness of the room once the sun went down.

“Miss Autumn Farrell,” a man said, letting himself into the room. Autumn squinted her eyes at the light coming in, and blinked them several times to readjust when it closed again. “A professional hacker, amateur sniper and hand-to-hand combatant. The fourth official member of the Sugar Pine Crew. What a mistake you’ve made.”

“No, what a mistake you’ve made. I have no money, the crew has no money. You’ll sooner cut your losses by killing me than trying to ransom me off to them. I’m a waste of your time.” 

“You mean far more to them than you can ever imagine,” he told her. “And when they come looking for you, we’ll be ready. But until then,” he winked at her and left. Autumn sighed and sat back down on the mattress. It smelled damp and moldy, the cold chill of the room seemed to prick every single one of her nerve endings, causing her to grab at one of the blankets in an effort to warm up. 

Autumn didn’t know how long she was there for, the echoing silence in her ears seemed twice that without the warmth of the office, the baritone buzzing of Steven’s voice accompanied by the mid-bass of Cib’s. Autumn was legally deaf, but she could hear some things, words sounded like murmurs, yelling like whispers and she missed it. It was all still better than the nothingness she was experiencing at the moment. 

Every day a bottle of water and a piece of stale bread was put in her room. She woke up to it sitting there and for the first two days it sat there, untouched. She broke on the third day, her throat too dry and her stomach so empty she was moments from dry-heaving. Autumn regretted it but she just wasn’t strong enough. 

It might’ve been five days when he returned, the man that Autumn didn’t recognize. He stomped into the room and grabbed her by the hair. Autumn groaned in pain but other than that, didn’t respond. He pointed a gun at her stomach but Autumn didn’t dare flinch. She had been through worse. 

“How are they not looking for you? Are you so undesirable that they don’t even care? That they’ll sooner replace you, let you rot here, instead of trying to save your life. Your crew is bullshit.” 

“I told you,” Autumn told him. He threw her back on the ground, Autumn’s head connecting harshly against the stone floor. She turned over, groaning. She could feel the raw spot on her forehead, the slight spike of pain from him pulled out some of her hair. 

“So help me God, they will come for you. I don’t care what I have to do to convince them, they will come for you.” he muttered in her ear. She could hear it, the buzzing, but his voice wasn’t strong enough for her to catch words. A blade came down on her wrist, cutting a shallow gash over it. Autumn groaned in pain, the man throwing a roll of tape and a patch of gauze down on the mattress before taking his leave. 

Autumn turned over grab for it, watching the blood trickle out of her gash and onto the blanket. She sniffed and then grabbed the tape and gauze. She pressed the gauze down on the still bleeding wound and felt around in the dim room for the tape, making a hasty job of closing it up. 

She picked up the water she still had a little bit left of and wet the corner of the blanket. She cleaned up around the bandage and then pushed everything away, curling up on the mattress. 

She wasn’t sure what made her want to cry. The fact that she was now in pain and alone in her terrifying silence or the fear that maybe they weren’t looking for her. Perhaps no one actually wanted to find Autumn and she would die here, alone and scared. Sugar Pine was a new crew, they didn’t have unlimited resources like Fakehaus or the Fake AH Crew might. They had very little time or resources to dedicate to finding a, quite replaceable, hacker. 

Sniffling once more, Autumn took a deep breath. 

She refused to cry. If she was going to die here, she was willing to accept that. 

It was perhaps a week later before anything else happened. She still wasn’t sure how long she was there for, every day seemed like days, every hour a lifetime in her chamber of nothingness. She couldn’t even be sure that anyone remembered she was down there until she felt the ground shake below here. 

There was a soft roaring in her ears and the entire room seemed to be shaking. There was a hard tremble through the Earth and Autumn looked up. She couldn’t see a damn thing through the slots at the top of the room but she ran as close to the door as she could and started stomping her feet and screaming. 

The possibility of the room being sound proof came to her mind for a second before she removed it. Autumn refused to think like that, not at that moment and instead screamed and yelled and shouted, praying someone could hear her. She prayed to Anubis, pleading that he would protect her from death as the ground continued to shake. 

“God, please, someone!” Autumn shrieked at the top of her lungs. 

The door opened and Autumn stumbled back from it. There was a blast of light from the door and then it settled into normal daylight, something Autumn hadn’t seen properly in what felt like years to her. She could barely process what was going on, seeing a man standing there and then another figure in the doorframe. 

“Oh my God, Autumn,” he said, coming into the room. Autumn stuttered for the door and stumbled back again when she felt Steven wrap his arms around her. She felt petrified and surprised and thankful and could barely understand what was going on. Her arm felt free, lighter than it hand in awhile and she didn’t even have the energy to read anyone’s lips. 

She started crying the moment Steven picked her up, carrying her bridal style out of the room. The sunlight was too bright for her eyes and she turned her face into Steven’s neck. 

“I wanna go home,” she mouthed into his neck. Or at least she thought she did because she couldn’t hear herself as she said it. Steven heard it, so loud and so clear, even through the sobbing. 

“You’re going home, Autumn, I promise,” he told her. 

 

“Is she okay?” James asked, leaning on the door. Autumn was sitting in the empty room of the office, staring out the window. She was sitting perfectly still, her arms around her knees and her eyes vacant. Steven stepped up to the door and couldn’t stop the way his eyes went straight to her arm. The wound had been cleaned and rebandaged as soon as they got her somewhere they could. She wouldn’t look anyone in the face from the moment they had found her until now. 

Autumn had come into the office, let herself into the empty room and shut the door immediately. The room was a little bit cleaner than before, the trash gone and she was just sitting on a piece of sound foam that was supposed to go on the wall, her laptop open but unused sitting in front of her. 

“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Steven dismissed it. James looked at him, saw the dark circles around Steven’s eyes, knew the way her disappearance had torn him up inside and couldn’t help but see that this was still affecting him. Affecting both of them, and he didn’t know how to help. 

“Maybe you should talk to her?” James suggested.

“Maybe you should talk to her! I’m the one who found her!”

“Bruce found her,” he reminded him. “And you sound really defensive,” he mentioned. Steve threw his hands up.

“Whatever. It’s obvious she doesn’t want to speak to anyone,” Steven said. 

“You don’t want to talk about it. It’s fucking you up, man. Just go see if she’s okay, alright?” James said, opening the door. 

Steve stared at him and at the cracked door and then at Autumn. She hadn’t even looked away from the window, not registering the door opening, but Steven walked in anyway. 

“What’s up?’ Autumn asked before Steven was five steps into the room. He paused, kicking the door shut perhaps harder than necessary. “What do you want to talk about?”

“How did you-?”

“You smell like cologne and Cib’s vape and gunpowder. I know when it’s you, Steven. You and James have also been loitering around the door for about five minutes.” 

“How would you know? You’ve been staring out the window for the past thirty minutes,” Steven quipped at her. He walked the rest of the way in and sat down next to her. “You’ve been staring out the window since you came in, actually. You haven’t spoken to anyone since you got in. You’ve barely spoken to anyone since…”

“Since you found me?” Autumn replied, turning her head to look at him. Steven realized then that she had been crying. She lifted her hand, Steven’s eyes gravitating to the angry redness around her wrist from the cuff, wiping under her eyes. “Sorry, I’ve not been very social. I just spent two weeks in a dark room, practically starved the entire time.” 

“Autumn-”

“Did you look for me?” She asked. 

“Of course we did,” Steven told her. “We almost tore the entirety of Los Santos apart looking for you, Autumn. We looked everywhere, we asked every group of RT to find you. I was willing to burn the city to the ground to find you. Why are you asking me that?” Steven asked. 

“No reason.” 

“No, no, there is a reason,” Steven said, crawling across the floor to sit in front of her. Autumn had gone back to looking out the window but Steven sat directly in her line of sight. “Why did you ask me that? Why would you ever ask me that. I almost destroyed this entire city to find you and you want to know if I looked for you? We nearly lost our minds when you didn’t show up. Cib and James talked me down from a murderous rampage when a week went by and we got your hair and a bloody knife in the mail. If it wasn’t for Fakehaus the city would be in fucking pieces by now. Of course we looked for you, what would make you think we didn’t?”

“It’s stupid,” Autumn passed off, turning to stare at the floor.

“What did they tell you?” Steven asked. Autumn didn’t turn her head, leading Steven to put his hand on her shoulder. Autumn looked back up. “What did they say to you?” He asked again.

“That you didn’t look. That you didn’t care. That you’d sooner replace me than bother,” Autumn told him. 

“He lied.”

“I know, and had I been in my right mind, I would’ve known that. But I was in that room for two weeks, I didn’t know what to think. I still can’t sleep in my apartment, Steven. I’m still afraid I’ll wake up there, or somewhere worse.” As she said this, she went back to staring out the window, like looking him in the face while she said this would be too much for her to handle. She couldn’t expose herself like that to him.

“I’ll… I’ll… fuck, I’ll position Devin at your door, he’ll be your personal bodyguard, I dunno!” Steven shouted, throwing his hands around. “I don’t know how to make you believe me that we looked for you more than the fact being that we’re here. We’re in the office and you’re safe.”

“I’m not safe,” Autumn insisted. “I’m in danger every second I’m a part of this crew. People know that they can get to you through me. I’m not even that much, I’m a hacker but for some reason, I let you turn me into something I’m not!” 

“You are always important, Autumn. You’re a valuable person, you’re more than just a hacker. You literally saved my life,” Steven reminded her, grabbing her by the shoulders, turning her to look at him. “This crew wouldn’t exist without you.”

“I wouldn’t have almost died if this crew didn’t exist.”

“You can leave whenever you want. But you should know that it wouldn’t be the same without you. We don’t tear the city apart for just anyone,” Steven told her. He let go of her and got his feet. The vibration of the door slamming shut was enough to have Autumn starting a bit. The sun was starting to set out the window, a warm, gold glow settling over the spare room. It should’ve felt peaceful but sunset only meant that night imminent and she was back to the darkness all over again.

 

Steven walked into the office with Cib and James on his heels. The door banged shut but Autumn didn’t move an inch on the couch, Steven looking over to see her, asleep, dead to the world. He made an aborted move towards her, but James grabbed the back of his shirt. They could all see the steady rise and fall of her chest, her body curled up in a fetal position.

“She’s probably barely slept. Let her sleep.”

“You think she’ll quit?” Cib asked through a cloud of vapor, his voice distorted by the smoke. 

“No. Which means we’ll just have to work harder to keep her safe.”

**Author's Note:**

> i love autumn, i love her character and decided to play on that a bit
> 
> i wrote the main part of this months ago, rediscovered it, added an ending and here we fuckin are


End file.
